Guerilla Gardening, Seed Bombing, and Food Security

Today during my lunch break I came across three fascinating Wikipedia articles:

Feel free to peruse the above links if you like, I’ll talk about each of the three below:

Guerrilla Gardening: As usual, Wikipedia has the best one-paragraph summary for what this means:

Guerrilla gardening is political gardening, a form of nonviolent direct action, primarily practiced by environmentalists. It is related to land rights, land reform, and permaculture. Activists take over (“squat”) an abandoned piece of land which they do not own to grow crops or plants. Guerrilla gardeners believe in re-considering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it.

While I’m sure it would be fascinatingly easy to devolve into a political discussion regarding this topic, but as usual, this isn’t my aim.

I’m more surprised to learn that this is the formal name for the practice that Shane Claiborne describes in The Irresistible Revolution for planting flowers in trashed TV’s in abandoned neighborhoods of the poorer areas of Philadelphia. I also wonder what the effects are on a community of this type of action, for the better or worse. Things to think on.

Seed Bombing: This one’s just awesome, and heavily related to the previous topic:

Seed bombing, also known as “Seed Grenades” is a technique of introducing vegetation to arid soils or otherwise inhospitable terrains. A seed bomb is a compressed clod of soil containing live vegetation that may be thrown or dropped onto a terrain to be modified.

How awesome is that. Wonder how hard it is to make a seed bomb. All you’d really need is soil, water, a very hardy plant, and then maybe some sort of biodegradable netting that would encase the “bomb.” My gut tells me (or rather, the place where my gut would be if I had a gut, so perhaps “the place 2 to 3 inches in front of my stomach tells me”) that the Internets most certainly has the answers I would seek on such a topic.

Food Security: This one was listed a related article to Guerrilla Gardening:

Food security describes a situation in which people do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. World-wide around 852 million men, women and children are chronically hungry due to extreme poverty; while up to 2 billion people lack food security intermittently due to varying degrees of poverty.

I had never considered there would be such a succinct term to describe this problem. The article goes on to explain some views held by various organizations on how to bring food security to more people, and some potential risks to food security world wide.

Its good idea for us to have reminders such as this of what our brethren worldwide face as a daily reality. How and when and with what means we alleviate such a problem, I have plenty of ideas and few answers.

Oh, and between this blog post and this one, I must be becoming a hippie or liberal or communist or something. Sorry about that. I think I’ll blame it on Josh, as he’s the only hippie liberal communist I know.

FL: Awesome slideshow of 101 odd pictures – Instead of trying to describe this funny link better… look at the following photo. If it makes you giggle, you’ll appreciate this link.

Srsly overheard on gmail:

[context (not like you need it) - Eric and Mrs. d10 are discussing... can't remember, I think maybe Chipotle]

Mrs d10: yeah definitely
for reals
[fr]
or flz
maybe frlz
whaddya think?
me: well
Mrs d10: frlz?
me: srsly is canonical
so prably frlz
Mrs d10: canonical?
me: yeah
Mrs d10: how is it canonical?
me: basic: reduced to the simplest and most significant form possible without loss of generality; “a basic story line”; “a canonical syllable pattern”
srsly is the purest form (on the internets) of compressing a word in this fashion
aka taking the vowels out
Mrs d10: i’ve never heard that called canonical before
de-voweling a word
dis-envoweling a word

Meanwhile, our hero inquires with a trusted ally and lore-master of the internets, the one we call Jeremy.

me: jeremy
is the word srsly
canonical
Jeremy: yes?
me: yes or no
no question marx
Jeremy: yes
me: thx
time to grubbins

Japanes biker fails to notice missing leg – sorta old, but still awesome. Summary: guy on motorcycle smacks into safety barrier, severs leg below knee, doesn’t notice, rides on for a while, friend has to bring leg till guy notices his leg-less-ness.

Some thoughts on The Well-Educated Mind, by Susan Wise Bauer – plus full book/reading list!!1

Full Book List from The Well-Educated Mind – click here for spreadsheet! – Last Updated 8/13/07, all publishers of recommended editions on list. Hope to update soon with any important notes that Bauer includes in the book summary on each book (stuff like – don’t read the preface till you read the book first, or the opposite being true).

As my dear wife’s blog adequately states, she’s about to be teaching as a classical education school, which is quite the new thing for her (and me!). To edu-muh-cate herself on the topic, she picked up several books recommended by the headmaster there (yeah, they’re badass, they have a headmaster).

One such book was entitled The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer. My ladyfriend, intrepid teacher that she is, greatly desired that I at least read the first four chapters of this book, simply that I would be more informed regarding her upcoming employment and could be engaged in discussion with her about the topic.

She got more than she bargained for. I read the 1st four chapters as requested, then continued on deeper in to the book, and purchased the tools the book suggests for its course of literature. You see, this book’s central point (IMO, of course) is that modern education lacks a great deal of depth, and that many of the skills of reading through and interpreting a book have been lost. The author offers up a digest of books, sorted by category (Novel, Autobiography, History/Politics, Poetry/Plays, in that order), that are then sorted by chronological order.

All in all, we’re looking at 117 books that include a sampling of the great literature of the world (though admittedly, mostly Western side of this world), in general from the last 400 years.

My goal, lofty as it is, is to work through this course of literature, no doubt skipping some titles and perhaps adding some of my own, and share thoughts from each of these works on this blog (since regular “hahah look what happened to me” posts are definitely on an extended pause for the moment).

Also, if your interested in the titles included on Bauer’s list, I’m working on creating a spreadsheet that has just about anything you’d need to know to pick up these books. It can be found Here. Note that I haven’t completely transcribed the publishers and publish dates yet, but its forthcoming soon.

Just for information’s sake, I’ll include the full list of titles and authors here, followed by the FL. Look forward to the thoughts on Don Quixote coming up soon!

Note I’m doing some experimenting w/ generating URLs to wikipedia using excel without typing in 117*2 a href=” blah blah blah statements. Some of these wikipedia articles may not work, but you’ll live, I think.

FL: Whoa. – best youtube of wild animals evar. Now, with stupid tourist/safari goer commentary!

Really, Really Free Market – Athens, GA – who wants to go?

[would have been posted to CashMoneyJesus, but they bloxored it at work]

So was doing some Wikipedia perusing (see the FL for another great find) and came across this article about Really, Really Free Markets. Here’s what Wikipedia says about it:

The Really, Really Free Market (RRFM) movement is a non-hierarchical collective of individuals who form a temporary market based on an alternative gift economy. The RRFM movement aims to counteract capitalism in a non-reactionary way. It holds as a major goal to build a community based on sharing resources, caring for one another and improving the collective lives of all. Markets often vary in character, but they generally offer both goods and services. Participants bring unneeded items, food, skills and talents such as entertainment or haircuts. A RRFM may take place in an open community space such as a public park or community commons. [bold added]

While obviously not as deep in scope, this reminds me of the church. Instead of pontificating re: how the church isn’t doing this (aside: I grow weary of blog posts where the entire point of the text is to assault some aspect of American Christianity and drag it through the mud, just so the author can make a point. A vast majority of people reading faith-related blogs are very aware the church has problems, and I don’t see the benefit in mentioning it every 10 minutes. ahem.), I’d rather focus more on how awesome it would be to go and participate in such an event.

I sadly assumed that they only took place hundreds of miles from where I live, but fortunately, the Wikipedia article includes this line:

Athens, GA witnessed its first RRFM on April 28th, 2007 as part of the May Day celebrations organized by Autonomous Athens. It has since become a monthly occurrence with event attendance usually in the hundreds.

Hell yeah! The web filter won’t allow me to see when the next one will occur, but it seems that it’s probably at the end of the month. If that’s the case, then I won’t be able to attend the August one, but the September one is definitely a possibility.

So lets talk about it! Anyone want to go, anyone got any ideas what to take, anyone been? Talk to me.

FL: Wikipedia’s result for searching on “your mom” – she’s in wikipedia you know. who? your mom.

wallet

Was brainstorming on trying to cut down what I carry in my wallet/pocketses. This is somewhat fitting or ironic, as I probably carry the most in my pockets of any dude I know (wallet, 7 keys, 2 car remote entry thingies, usb drive, digital camera, big honkin cell phone). Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

-Insurance: photocopying all insurance cards (health, whatnot), leaving original in car, carrying copy. Probably a good idea anyway, its lighter weight, and all the dr. really needs off of it is a photocopy [of my copy] and all the numbers on it. The card isn’t proof of insurance, it’s them calling the company to verify. Best part about this: totally cuts down on the headache of losing your wallet.
-Blockbuster card: in the car: already do this one. They can rent you movies off of your license.
-Kroger plus card: if you filled out the application, you can type in your phone number on the debit card PIN pad thing and it will accept you as a Kroger plus customer. Props to Adam for this one.
-Other reward cards: http://www.justoneclubcard.com/ – lets you combine 8 of those rewards cards into one little credit card-sized sheet. Woot! Almost makes me want to sign up for 8 of those things just so I can use this hax.
-Credit Cards: go back and forth, but I think one tied to a checking account, and one credit card is a maximum, OR just one, tied to whichever you use for monthly expenses. Right now I’m at two, and that’s really just for emergency type stuff. Never needed the second one yet.
-Keys: Probably don’t need the remote entry dealio for my wife’s car, the normal key works fine. Probably should return the key to the main door and office door of previous workplace :p. Seems like that’s a slight liability for them, methinks.

I cleaned out the cards in the wallet, and if I have my photocopies, license, 2 cc’s, and car insurance, the total stack is down to 3cm. Previous was probably double that. Down from 7 keys 2 remote to 4 keys 1 remote. USB drive is 128mb and gigantic by today’s standards. May have to upgrade that junk.

FL: Apple Store to begin charging an entrance fee – Can’t click through to the real page but… almost definitely satirical. Kinda sad I thought it might be true for a moment.

Who’s lame?

Your mom. That’s who. Not me.

I know I’ve dropped off the face of the earth (read: Internets) in the three main arenas that I was on it, but I’m updating this one and another to let you know that the third has just been spammed with three months of me carrying a camera around in my pants. Even this very moment, it’s receiving its spam, which I bequeathed on it gladly. Here’s the links, if you don’t already have them:

Link on Flickr
RSS for the same – note: Feed is not the one for Flickr, this is for the onceaday set only, which is what you want.
FL: don’t do this.

Gotta love the media.

What’s wrong with this picture?

If you don’t see the problem, here let me help with my trademarked bright pink spraypaint in mspaint:

Wow.

Mad props to d10 for showing me this. If you get weirded out, go tell him about it.

FL: Crocodile Chomps Off Zoo Worker’s Arm

so they have free iced coffee at dunkin donuts today and i got some and its totally awesome and im totally like…

so today at dunkin donuts they have free iced coffee so i went and got some but theres actually two on the way to work so i stopped at both of them and i was going to go at lunch to a different dunkin donuts and then back to the same two i went i went to on the way to work on the way home.

I kinda feel like Howard Dean must have felt when he did that whole, “WHOO-AHHHH!!!” thing during the 2004 primaries.

FL: Free Iced Coffee Day

CashMoneyJesus is here!

Well, after my long hiatus, it’s time to migrate on to something new. I’ve been formulating a new blog for the last several months, with a much different focus than the current. Here’s a quick update on what those changes entail, partially.

In any case, the new blog is ready to roll. It’s about Personal Finance and Faith… and all the fun topics that meet at the intersection of the two of those.

If you choose to follow me on this superific journey, you’ll need to update your RSS feed. That means, if you’re using Firefox 2.0, Internet Explorer 7, or any other modern browser, just click the following button and it will walk you through adding it to your feed reader of choice:

Thanks for following along with me, the faithful among you that have journeyed on from my humble beginnings just over a year ago till now. FYI, if I see something worthy of your attention that doesn’t fall within the topics of the new blog, I’ll most likely post it here, so don’t delete this feed just yet. Besides, not like it hurts you to leave an RSS feed on your reader or anything.

FL: Bill Gates only lets his daughter use the computar for 10 minutes a day – owned!

So, I lied.

No break yet.

I know most (more than likely, about 90%) of you don’t really listen to “deh rap muzac.” And that’s okay. Occasionally, rap artists manage to cut through all the BS of how awesome they are and produce something you could call: testimony (this isn’t necessarily a fair statement, rapping about how awesome you are sells; I’m sure some of the deeper tracks from the most popular rappers have lyrics similar to the ones below).

In any case, do me a favor and read these lyrics.

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love

[Ludacris]
Now little Lisa’s only 9 years old
She’s tryna figure out why the world is so cold
While she’s all alone and ain’t never met her family
Mama’s always gone and she never met her daddy
Part of her is missing and nobody will listen
Mama’s on drugs gettin’ high up in the kitchen
Bringin’ home men at different hours of the night
Startin’ with some laughs… usually ending in a fight
Sneakin’ in her room when her mama’s knocked out
Tryna have his way and little Lisa says ‘ouch’
She tries to resist but then all he does is beat her
Tries to tell her mom but her mama don’t believe her
Lisa’s stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin’ else to do but get some clothes and pack
She says she’s bout to run away and never come back

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love

[Ludacris]
Little Nicole is only 10 years old
She’s steady tryna figure out why the world is so cold
Why she’s not pretty and nobody seems to like her
Alcoholic step-dad always wanna strike her
Yells and abuses leaves her with some bruises
Teachers ask questions she’s makin’ up excuses
Bleeding on the inside crying on the out
It’s only one girl who really knows what she’s about
Her name is little Stacey and they become friends
Promise that they’ll always be tight till the end
Until one day little Stacey gets shot
A drive-by bullet went stray up on da block
Now Nicole’s stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin’ else to do but get her clothes and pack
She says she’s bout to run away and never come back

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love

[Ludacris]
Little Ericka is 11 years old
She’s steady tryna figure out why the world is so cold
So she pops X to get rid of all the pain
Plus she’s having sex with a boy who’s sixteen
Emotions run deep and she thinks she’s in love
So there’s no protection he’s using no glove
Never thinkin’ bout the consequences of her actions
Livin’ for today and not tomorrow’s satisfaction
The days go by and her belly gets big
The father bails out he ain’t ready for a kid
Knowin’ her mama would blow it all out of proportion
Plus she lives poor so no money for abortion
Ericka’s stuck up in the world on her own
Forced to think that Hell is a place called home
Nothin’ else to do but get her clothes and pack
She says she’s bout to run away and never come back

[Mary J Blige]
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love
Runaway Love, Runaway Love

Don’t you keep on runnin away
Don’t you keep on runnin away
i know how you feel
ive been there
i was runnin away too
I’ll will run away with you
I’ll will run away with you
Runnin runnin runnin away love

run away run away love
dont keep runin away
i’ll run away with you
if you want me too

[Ludacris]
Yeah, I can only imagine what you’re going through, ladies
Sometimes I feel like running away myself
So do me a favor right now and close your eyes
And picture us running away together and
When we come back everything is gonna be OK

(whisper) Open your eyes.

Now you can say whatever you like about rap: it’s crude, it’s poor regard for women, its focus on drinking and sex, whatever. At least it allows for brutal honesty. I don’t hear songs like this on the pop/christian/country stations.

FL: 10 things you should never buy new – if your too busy to click link, here’s the list: books, hand tools, jewelry, cars, office furniture, software and console games, time shares, sports equipment, little kids toys, dvds and cds. I agree with nearly all of these. Not that its that easy to legally buy software free, but whatever.